City Lights Bookstore
The City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Publishers in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, California, is an independent bookstore and a small press publisher owned by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It is particularly known for its publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl & Other Poems and the controversy which ensued. Its address is 261 Columbus Avenue, on the corner with Broadway street, causing the building to be an unusual triangular shape. Running adjacent to it is Jack Kerouac Alley, named after the author of the critically acclaimed On the Road, which was seen as one of the founding books of beat literature along with Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems. Bookstore City Lights was founded in 1953 as the nation's first all-paperback bookstore, by Peter D. Martin and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.It should also be established that Lawrence Ferlinghetti became the sole owner of the store in 1955 when The co-owner Peter D. Martin passed away. It was established in the southwest corner of a building constructed the year after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The store gradually expanded, first taking over the basement of the building and then space formerly occupied by an adjacent travel agency in the 1970s, and an upper-floor apartment in the 1990s. City Lights is a member of the American Booksellers Association. Publishers In 1955, Ferlinghetti launched City Lights Publishers with the now-famous Pocket Poets Series; since then the press has gone on to publish a wide range of titles, both poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, international and local authors. Today, City Lights has well over a hundred titles in print, with a dozen new titles being published each year. The press is known and respected for its commitment to innovative and progressive ideas, and its resistance to forces of conservatism and censorship. All City Lights Publications that are currently available are proudly featured in the bookstore. Ferlinghetti A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered the literary elite’s definition of art and the artist’s role in the world. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic or personal protest, for it stands on his craftsmanship, thematics, and grounding in tradition. Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. It has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print. The author of poetry, plays, fiction, art criticism, and essays, he has a dozen books currently in print in the U.S., and his work has been translated in many countries and in many languages. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), and Americus Book I (2004) published by New Directions. Ferlinghetti’s paintings have also been shown at various galleries around the world, from the Butler Museum of American Painting to Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. In San Francisco, his work can regularly be seen at the George Krevsky Gallery at 77 Geary Street. ''Howl'' In 1956 City Lights published Howl & Other Poems as poem number 4 in its City Lights Pocket Poets Series. Ferlinghetti and the bookstore manager, Shigeyoshi Murao, were arrested on an obscenity charge for publishing and selling the book. With the aid of the ACLU, the book was vindicated in court, the judge ruling that the work was not without redeeming social importance. In The Fall of America, Allen Ginsberg describes City Lights as "home." Landmark Status On July 9, 2001, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a designation of landmark status for the City Lights Bookstore building on cultural, historical, and architectural grounds, citing its assocations with "major developments in post-World War II literature as publisher of Beat Generation writers and the defense of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems in a landmark test of First Amendment protections" and with "persons important in the literary and cultural development of San Francisco and the nation," as well as its "distinctive characteristics typical of small commercial buildings constructed following the 1906 earthquake and fire" as a "fairly rare survivor of a once common building type of its period."Ordinance to Amend Appendix A of Planning Code Article 10 to Designate City Lights Bookstore As a Landmark PDF This landmark designation mandates the preservation of certain external features of the building and its immediate surroundings. Numbered references External links *Official website *Landmark status likely for beatnik-era bookstore, a June 2001 CNN article *And the Beats Go On, a June 2001 article from the San Francisco Chronicle *Poetry Landmark: The City Lights Bookstore, from the website of the Academy of American Poets *City Lights Pocket Poets checklist and the story behind the cover design, from a fan's personal website *Upcoming events at City Lights Category:Beat Generation Category:Book publishing companies of the United States Category:Independent bookstores Category:Landmarks in San Francisco Category:Small press publishers Category:Bookstores it:City Lights Bookstore }}